PART 1

HENRY

A good man is a good man, whether in this church or out of it.

Brigham Young

Eight Weeks Earlier

CHAPTER 1

Corrine on the 9-1-1 desk judged the complainant, Miss Maude Hampson, to be crazy, and conveyed this conclusion, in milder language, to the assigned responder, a rookie named Jackson. There is no 10-Code in the West Valley City Police Department manual for “something very upsetting going on across the street,” and so she reframed it in her hand-off to the young patrolman. “Dispatch. Officer Jackson, can you respond to an old lady, reports ‘suspicious activity’ in house opposite? Unspecified. Confused.”

“Any report of weapons?” Jackson replied. A spate of shootings had hit the Valley in the last month.

“No. As said, woman was vague. She seemed a little … pixilated.” Corrine dictated Maude’s full name and her address: 4 Hollis.

It was mid-afternoon when Officer Jackson arrived on Hollis Street. West Valley, an adjunct to Salt Lake City, isn’t all that big, but he had never been here, never noticed the street. Jackson liked to think he was an observant man. The first feature that struck him as odd was the pair of thick, incomplete stone pillars that flanked the entrance to the street, as if Hollis were a rich gated community — without the gate. The houses, mostly bungalows, formed a short, unimpressive row down to a cul-de-sac. He slowed and examined the Hampson residence, which was the first place on his right. The suspect house, Number 3, stood across the way, a mirror match of Maude Hampson’s.

All appeared quiet. But it was a sign of Jackson’s misgivings, almost foreboding, that he looked around and wondered, “What happened to houses 1 and 2?”

The sun beat down on his cruiser. Jackson got out and eyeballed Number 3. He hoped to earn a detective’s shield one day, and he tried to think like a detective now, taking a long moment to look up and down Hollis Street. There wasn’t a soul outside. What did the street want to tell him? Most properties were well maintained, the paint jobs recent, lawns cut. The exception was Number 5, which felt not only vacant but abandoned; the side lawn between it and Number 3 had gone to seed.

Jackson glanced at the stone pillars and the first pair of odd-numbered bungalows. A fastidious neighbour had done the mowing from the outer avenue all the way to Number 3, then stopped. These were property owners who helped one another, he reasoned. But there was no one to ask about this, and he returned to his patrolman’s drill.

Musing on neutron bombs, Jackson rang the bell at Number 4. Maude must have been hovering by the door, for after only ten seconds, she began to fumble with the two heavy locks; then, quiet. He sensed her moving away. Maybe only ghosts lived on Hollis Street, he thought. He pushed open the door. Fifteen feet away, at the end of a dank corridor, stood a wizened figure leaning on a cane.

“Don’t be afraid,” he called. But Maude wasn’t afraid; she was irritated. She darted looks into her living room. “My stories are about to start.”

I’ll never make detective at this rate, young Jackson told himself. He came fully inside and closed the door. One of the locks was a Yale deadbolt, gleaming brass, recently installed. Turning back, he confronted empty space. Maude had vanished into the ghost world.

He entered the living room to find the woman plunked down on her horsehair sofa, a channel changer in one hand pointed into space, as if she were guiding a model airplane or a personal drone. She clicked back and forth between two soap operas. Jackson sized up the décor as that of a paranoid recluse: permanent Christmas figurines, bird plates and a bird clock, kerosene lamp chimneys with electric bulbs inserted, Toby jugs, and a Hummel collection. Maude herself, draped in layers of shawls and beads, matched the furnishings. Her cane was a carved wood shillelagh, and Jackson wondered if the Home Shopping Network sold those things, too.

“I had to phone because my stories start at three. I need to concentrate on my programs.” Her thumb remained poised over the remote, and she never looked at Jackson.

Maude was a watcher. That could be useful, Jackson thought. “What did you see that worried you, Miss Hampson? Was there someone breaking in across the way?”

Maude adopted a patronizing tone that Jackson hated. “No, Officer, there wasn’t any activity near the house. In fact, it was the lack of it that struck me. Gabriella always walks Puffles at first light. Again in the late morning. Mr. Watson comes home for lunch most days. Didn’t today.”

“Let me be clear. You called in at 12:55 p.m. Was that because you saw nothing or because you saw something?”

She turned his way. Jackson later said that this was the moment he saw a spark in her eye that went beyond idle meddling or gossip. “I saw Puffles in the window.”

Jackson ground it out. “Okay, Miss Hampson, what kind of dog is Puffles?”

“Miniature poodle. Losing his hair, though.”

Jackson stared across the road at the front window of Number 3. “A miniature poodle wouldn’t be able to see over the windowsill.”

“He was hopping up and down. Wanted to get out and pee, I’m sure. Bouncing into view.”

“Like a jack-in-the-box?”

“Oh, do African-Americans grow up with that game, too?”

Officer Jackson could have swallowed his badge. There weren’t a lot of black cops in Utah, and he was used to the occasional obliquely racist comment from older white residents. He fought to keep his anger under control. Utah was what it was. The fact that the Mormon church had taken its time jettisoning its racial exclusions did not fuel resentment in him, for Utah was home, and both Jackson and his wife, Wanda, were Provo-born. Utah society is evolving, he mantra’ed. What mildly pissed him off was that Maude Hampson didn’t appear to be a Mormon herself.

“What colour?” Jackson snapped.

Maude recoiled at the warning in his tone, then forced a sickly smile. “Oh, you mean the dog. Puffles is white.”

Officer Jackson ambled across Hollis Street, which the hot sun had beaten into inertness. He had choices to make. He had no authority to enter an empty house, and nothing struck him as exceptional about Number 3, certainly nothing to justify an emergency break-in. The façade was well tended; the owners had painted the shutters within the past year and installed a quality aluminum door recently; the solid wooden door behind it was an attractive pale green, matching the shutters. Jackson walked up the concrete steps, opened the metal door and knocked.

“Mr. Watson? Mrs. Watson?”

No answer. He rapped again, called their names a second and a third time. From the top of the steps, he leaned over the iron railing towards the living room window but could see almost nothing of the interior. He knocked again.

As Officer Jackson backed down the steps, preparing to circle the silent house, a movement caught his eye. He saw a flash of white. He moved to the lawn foursquare in front of the living room window. There! — the top of the poodle’s head. It jumped again. Its skull showed pinkish under scruffy curls, and its eyes were manic and rheumy. It trampolined a half inch higher each time. Jackson stared, fixed in place. The dog saw Jackson and found fresh energy. This time it bounced full-body above the living room windowsill.

Puffles had a soaking red beard.